“E” is for Everyone, and that is exactly what the new Boom Blox Bash Party videogame is. Steven Spielberg created this sequel to the original Boom Blox game along with Electronic Arts (EA) as something both kids and adults could enjoy.

The original offered Adventure and Explore Modes, Party and Create Mode. The sequel, with 400 levels, and the ability in Create Mode to design your own puzzle, then share it with friends via WiiConnect24, may be the hit of the summer season. EA has added a lot to the original, including block-laying chickens and baseball-throwing monkeys who play in four new environments, Tiki, Medieval, Frontier, and Haunted. You can participate in Versus, Co-op, or Team Play, to play competitively, cooperatively, or in the all-new team-based action, with twice as many multiplayer challenges as the original Boom Blox.

Good reviews are already being posted. Worthplaying.com says, “Boom Blox Bash Party takes destruction to new heights, providing the ultimate social gaming experience!”

Spielberg created both the original, and the new release, in conjuction with EA to whom he sold his game studio, Dreamworks Interactive, along with the popular “Medal of Honor,” several years back. During an interview with CelebrityByte Spielberg explained why he got back into video games. He said that his “younger children enjoy playing the Wii more than the PlayStation 3 or the Xbox 360, and this was a chance to “show [them] they can have fun playing games that are non-violent and much more creative and strategic”. He didn’t want his kids to be couch potatoes, but to get up and move their bodies around more. The Wii satisfied that goal.

In the Boom Blox series, players use the Wii Remote to manipulate a variety of objects, such as bowling balls, baseballs, laser guns, and water hoses to knock over structures made up of blocks. They also grab blocks in Jenga-style gameplay, being careful as they try to remove a maximum number of blocks without toppling a precarious stack.

Amir Rahimi, the original game’s senior producer, says the game teaches players realistic physics. In Tower Topple, for example he says, “it really matters what angle you shoot, how hard you throw it, you get a billiards mechanic where you have to move the angles and pick the right shot. Every single time they play it, the blocks will fall over differently. New strategies emerge every time you play it.” Different types of blocks possess different physical properties, so their mass and the amount of friction they exert alter the way they react to contact.

Spielberg, writer, producer and director, is famous for the movies Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Raiders of the Lost Ark, Jurassic Park, and the more serious, like Color Purple. Turning his talents to video gaming, he feels that there aren’t many similarities between creating in Hollywood and in the gaming sphere. He says: “So far, there hasn’t been a major success in the videogame industry based on a motion picture, nor has there been a very successful motion picture based on a videogame. There’s not been convergence, thus far. There will be. When it happens it will be dynamite.”